


Only "Human" After All...?

by MercuryHomophony



Series: Uncanny Valley [1]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryHomophony/pseuds/MercuryHomophony
Summary: Gordon isn't human, but that doesn't matter - he's perfected his disguise, and currently works right under the noses of the very corporation that would pose the greatest threat to him, and they're none the wiser.Unfortunately, the Resonance Cascade and his new, totally human friends are making things difficult. Especially when they do totally inhuman things.
Series: Uncanny Valley [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2025299
Comments: 74
Kudos: 239





	1. Benrey - Unidentified NonHuman

**Author's Note:**

> Absolutely wrote this for myself, completely unedited raw story-vom. I love the joke that "Gordon's the only human in a room full of superpowered non-humans" and was like "what if he is also a superpowered non-human but is just much, much better at hiding it and is just... so stressed about all these other non-humans flagrantly flaunting it?"  
> Also normally I'd be very attentive to detail and timelines and stuff but I don't feel like rewatching it (again) to mark out the timeline so I'm just gonna play fast and loose and maybe edit it later!

Gordon Freeman was a master of subterfuge. No one would ever have accused him of that, which made sense, because being a master of subterfuge generally meant escaping notice, and the acclaims that came with it. Still, he sometimes wished he had a few friends in the know, if only so he could brag about how well he stayed undercover. 

Because, Gordon was not only a master of subterfuge, he was also... not human. 

He didn't quite know what he was. He'd been born on Earth, to two similarly not-human beings, who had taught him how to act human enough to stay out of harm's way and not much else. He'd taught himself the finer points of shapeshifting, crafting a perfectly normal human face that no one would look at twice, and was so practiced in holding it it was almost nature at this point. He'd figured out the whole 'talking out loud' bit, although he still had some issues with what should be internal dialogue and what should be external dialog. The rest of his powers were mostly a mystery to him. His parental figures taught him a few basics, and informed him of what natural changes he could expect around puberty (the less said about that, the better), and that was it. He was pretty okay just living as a human though, albeit with some choice cheat codes through life. He'd done the Normal Human Thing for his geographic location, gone to high school, then college, then graduate school. He'd learned about the world, and how the world worked, and then how the world could _theoretically_ work, and found himself with a PhD, a job offer, and a realization. 

He'd spent his whole life trying to be as human as possible so no one would suspect a thing. He'd seen sci-fi films, he knew what happened to unusual specimens behind closed doors. And now, he had a job offer at the very same kind of facility that would undertake such a procedure. 

And no one knew a thing. 

So it was with a smug sense of satisfaction that Gordon Freeman, definite human and theoretical physicist, started working at Black Mesa. 

#~#

This security guard is really bugging him. Gordon's been working for Black Mesa for over two _years_ now without an issue, and technically he did have a passport. He wasn't keen on letting someone so clearly invested in scrutinizing him look at it, though. Sure, he'd obtained it legally... but what if there was something he'd missed that gave him away?

Ugh, he was too in his head about this. He just had to focus on the test.

"Focus on the test, just focus on the test, Gordon," he muttered to himself. The guard just _appeared_ in his peripheral vision next to him. 

"Yo, you uh... talking to yourself? Mr. Science-NoPassport?" The security guard leaned _way_ too far into his personal space. "That's uh... that's kind of suspicious, bro."

"It's not," Gordon said, despairing inside. "It's not suspicious, look, I - There's a test today, okay? With some _very_ dangerous materials, that give off a deadly amount of radiation. You get that, right?" 

The security guard gave him a blank stare.

He soldiered on. "So, I'm wearing all this, right?" He gestured to the HEV suit. "If I didn't, the radiation would kill me, ok? You," and he gestured to the guard's uniform, "you _don't_ have a radiation suit, so like... If you go in there, you're gonna _die_." There was also a fair chance that a human in an HEV suit would die as well, which was why Gordon had "bravely volunteered" to be the samples manager on this first test - he could shift his cells to survive any radiation that got past the HEV suit, and once they knew what they were working with, they could adjust the suit to work better for human volunteers in the future. No one would know the difference, and the project wouldn't be set back months. "Like... humans can't survive that kind of exposure, you _will_ die." 

"It's okay I'm not- I'm not human," the guard said, turning away before he could spot the look of mixed shock and annoyance on Gordon's face. 

"Right, yeah, not human," he replied, mind racing as he followed. First, there had been those... weird blue orbs that he'd sung into that other guard's face. But, the other guard seemed unsurprised by it, and he'd called it the Black Mesa SweetVoice, which was exactly the kind of bullshit thing that this place would come up with. But then there was also jumping from the elevator and landing from an eight foot drop with no sign of strain or injury, and now just... coming out and _saying_ it?

Either this guy was an asshole, or he was the _worst_ disguised non-human Gordon had ever seen.

\--

Joke's on Gordon - it turns out, Benrey is _both_. He seems to enjoy fucking around just to get a rise out of Gordon, and he swears, every time he turns around, Benrey's there doing some _other crazy inhuman thing_ , just... blatantly! Where anyone can see it! Granted, any human outside of the Science Team dies too quickly for it to be a long-term issue, but... seriously! They're in the middle of Black Mesa, and Gordon might never have visited the biology department but he's _heard_ about some of the things that go on there. In the off-chance that this _isn't_ the end of the world, and Black Mesa still exists after everything, he doesn't want to draw anyone's attention. 

But Benrey just... shoots his fucking mouth orbs everywhere, _cocoons a body_ , and Gordon swears he's teleporting when his back is turned. He hasn't caught him in the act yet, but by god he will. And he's definitely doing it to annoy him, too! He doesn't give the other members of the Science Team half the crap that he gives Gordon. It's a small blessing, he supposes - he's not human, so he can take a little more than the rest of the team if Benrey decides to randomly shoot in his direction to piss him off. Still doesn't mean that he _likes_ it. 

And then, Benrey gets crushed while holding up a door so everyone can get through, and Gordon... feels a little bad. Sure, he didn't get along with the guy, but he's also never actually met another non-human outside of his parents and his son (that's a whole different story). It was kind of nice to not feel like the weirdest person in the group, even if his disguise was perfect.

Then, a skeleton shows up and screams Black Mesa SweetVoice at them, and he skips right over sad and back to annoyed. 


	2. Bubby - Test Tube Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so now Gordon's stuck with three humans and some nonhuman who's apparently trying to stress Gordon out to death. That's fine.
> 
> It's fine!

Gordon's given up on trying to ignore the weird things Benrey is doing. He's clearly not human, and even though the others seem to be cheerfully going along with... pretty much everything that he's getting up to, Gordon's not about to blow his own cover. He's been pretending to be human almost since he was born, and he'll be damned if he breaks cover to smack some sense into Benrey.

He really, really wants to, though. 

It's fortunate that he's wearing the HEV suit, though. His teammates don't question his resilience to bullets, radiation, or raw sewage, despite how much of it they end up slogging through. With the HEV suit, no one notices him slightly changing his cells, toughening his skin and shifting organs around to better brace himself against all the crazy stuff happening. 

His teammates don't have that kind of luxury, though, which is why it's so frustrating that one of them is _constantly_ racing ahead, only to come screaming back. "Bubby," as he called himself, is a senior scientist that Gordon's definitely seen around the lab before. Mostly, he sees him with Dr. Coomer, and since Coomer took Gordon on as a protégé for this project, it makes sense he'd run into his friend on occasion. He'd just never had the chance to catch the professor's name before. He sort of wished he'd asked before the test, when he'd found him in the computer. 

And Gordon is worried about him. Right after the ResCas kicked off, when they were regrouping, he was checking in with everyone and finally thought to ask his name. The guy said he was "Bubby," which was _not_ a name. Between that, the weird dilation of his eyes, and the constant cussing (that last one might be in character, but Gordon's not sure), Gordon's pretty certain the guy's concussed. They've found at least one med station, so he's hoping that "Bubby" will be alright, but he keeps an eye on him anyways.

 _Especially_ since he has a nasty habit of killing everything and running ahead and detonating explosives if Gordon looks away for more than five seconds. Sure, he's currently holding the record for figuring out how to get past all the tricky weird bits of Black Mesa. And, unlike Tommy and Dr. Coomer, he seems to be taking things a little more seriously than the rest of them. But he's still human, and Gordon is stressing out as he chases after Bubby _yet again_ , only to round the corner and find he's triggered another batch of trip mines. It's a miracle that he hasn't died yet, and if Gordon _was_ human, he'd be going gray with stress over how cavalier Bubby is with his life.

"What the hell, Bubby?" he asked when he finally caught up to him. Bubby shrugged.

"The last laser was green, this one was red!"

Gordon just lets out a helpless, near hysterical laugh, because it's either that or cry. How in God's name is he supposed to get this human out of here alive when he's constantly dancing past the jaws of death?

\--

As it turns out... He didn't need to worry. Apparently, during the test, when "Bubby" had claimed he was going to explode, it hadn't been metaphorical. Because now, Gordon has watched him "spontaneously combust" like, twice. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird enough that it's happened more than once with him completely unharmed, and it doesn't take a genius to put things together.

The thing is, Bubby has fucking pyrokinesis! Among other things! Things like:

  * Levitation,
  * An endless supply of blood,
  * The ability to survive being shot point blank by turrets,
  * _DEATH_ immunity,
  * and, apparently, phasing through walls! (Benrey calls this last one "no-clipping" when Gordon points it out, and proceeds to do the same thing when Gordon asks him about it, which raises the question of why the fuck he let himself get crushed by a _door_ , which turns into a whole other argument when Benrey starts mocking him. It's a non-starter.)



Gordon gets his answer for all the weirdness when they pass (and subsequently murder) some scientists that look an awful lot like Bubby, and Gordon learns about the "prototypes." Black Mesa has apparently gotten tired of hiring people, and has decided to start _growing_ their own perfect scientists, with... mixed results. Bubby claims to be the final version of the project, created in a tube somewhere in the depths of the facility, in a location unknown to him thanks to _goddamned neural implants_ that are _rigged to explode_ if he accidentally figures it out.

Gordon has never been so happy that he's kept his cover, because if this is what Black Mesa is doing with _human-based_ sapient creatures, he'd hate to see what they'd do to him. Still, once he figures it out, things smooth out a little. Black Mesa already _knows_ about Bubby, so there's no additional risk in him flaunting his powers (unlike a _certain_ security guard he could name). He doesn't worry so much about Bubby taking the lead when he wants, because either the professor will solve whatever puzzle is blocking the way before the rest of the team arrives, or he'll come running back screaming, enemies in tow as he gives the rest of the Science Team a heads-up. It's not perfect, but it works, and it'll help Gordon keep the two other human members of the group safe without giving himself away.

Things are going _great_. 


	3. Dr. Coomer - Former Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So currently Gordon's team consists of one enormously unhelpful non-human, one moderately helpful and vaguely threatening non-human, one old man with some cybernetic implants, and one young man with a terrifying sharpshooter instinct. 
> 
> Gordon can work with that. It's not like things can get any weirder, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Day Chapter?? Holy cow!  
> Also I Wrote This, and then it got Deleted Because I did a Dumb. RIP first draft. Hopefully 2nd draft has surpassed you.

When they manage to catch some downtime, Gordon tries to take advantage of it to bond with the Science team a bit more. He sits down and asks them questions - what hobbies they had, what their home lives were like, what they planned to do after they escaped Black Mesa... regular bonding stuff. He knows its important for the human psyche, to have some time for the brain to rest, and he figures it can't hurt to get to know more about his teammates. He tells them a little bit about himself, too, about his idle dreams of streaming video games and jokes about robbing a bank. He also tells them more about Joshua, although he leaves out the part where he's currently pupating at home (totally normal for the half-human, half-whatever Gordon's species hybrid he is, but the humans don't need to know that detail).

Tommy continues to demonstrate his competence by talking about his work in the biochemistry department, where he claims to have created the perfect dog, Sunkist. Coming from anyone else, Gordon might have written that off as a joke, but Tommy's so sincere and has honestly been the most down-to-earth of all the Science Team, so he decides to accept it at face value. The perfect dog is hardly the weirdest thing he's heard of here. 

Dr. Coomer, on the other hand, talks a little bit about his boxing hobby, both in and out of Black Mesa. He also mentions losing his wife in a divorce - not _divorcing_ his wife, but _losing her_ in the divorce. It's a weirdly specific way to word it, but Gordon doesn't care to pry too deeply into that. Then, Dr. Coomer starts talking about all the different science he's done here in Black Mesa, and Gordon starts to understand more about Coomer's whole situation.

Learning that Dr. Coomer has cybernetic enhancements is surprising, but ultimately makes sense. Gordon signed the same contract everyone else did, with the same health benefits. He's never needed to _use_ them, but he'd always been theoretically interested in the technology Black Mesa had at its disposal, and how it could be used for medical purposes. The doctors down in medical were said to be as competent as they were scary, although there were rumors that they sometimes slipped extra things in when they did surgeries, as an experiment. It would make sense that, if Dr. Coomer was going to get something fixed or replaced, he'd go to cybernetics instead. Besides, plenty of humans relied on things like pacemakers. Black Mesa was just a little more high-tech, was all. 

When Dr. Coomer had offered to look over the mountains using his SuperLegsTM, Gordon had been impressed. Later, he'd brought up his Black Mesa SuperLungsTM while they'd been traveling a flooded hallway (followed by Dr. Coomer _wrestling_ a _goddamned Shark_ , which was Wild). Then, while he'd been exploring a room with Bubby, the two of them had slipped down into an elevator shaft. Gordon had been shocked, but before it could turn into despair, Dr. Coomer had already pulled them up using his ExtendoArmsTM TM TM. 

Curiosity finally gets the better of him. "Hey, Dr. Coomer," he starts, walking alongside the doctor, "stop me if this is rude, but... how many cybernetic implants do you _have_?" 

"An excellent and very personal question!" Dr. Coomer replies with a grin, shooting his pistol down an empty hallway ("Don't waste the bullets!" Gordon groans, knowing he'd be ignored). "Well Gordon, I'd say the cybernetics department replaced about 69% of my body mass!"

"Nice," Benrey deadpans, clipping into the room behind them. Gordon just avoids jumping at his sudden appearance, but can't help the bark of laughter as his brain catches what he said. Dumb joke, making him laugh... He's an MIT grad, for gods sake. 

He ends up losing track of the conversation after that, with Benrey harrassing him and keeping him on the knife's edge between wanting to laugh at his stupid antics and throttle him. As much as he'd love to really slap some sense into Benrey, he'd need his own abilities for that, and he's still got two humans on the team who would be unwanted witnesses. Who cares that one of them is almost seventy percent metal?

\--

"Ah, my Clone!" 

Gordon has about two seconds of warning before Dr. Coomer's fist flies past him, into the face of the scientist he'd _just been trying to get information from, come ON!_ He's not quick enough to avoid the bloodsplatter as Dr. Coomer uses the strength of his ExtendoArmsTM to their full capacity, but he does manage to jump back before he follows the jab with a pulverizing volley of punches. 

"Dr. Coomerrrr," he groans, trying his best to not sound like a petulant child. "I was _talking_ to him, he could have told us something about the next area! He could have had _codes_! Something!" 

Dr. Coomer looks up from where he's turning a human body into meat jelly, and Gordon notices a glint in his eye that he hadn't had before. "Don't worry, Gordon!" he replies cheerfully. "As he was my clone, I now know everything he did!" He paused, throwing another blind punch at the corpse. "It wasn't much. He must have been just off the assembly line!"

"The _assembly line_...?"

"Well of course!" Dr. Coomer stands up, blood and viscera dripping off his lab coat. Gordon tries not to grimace, but he must fail, because Dr. Coomer glances down at himself. "Oh dear, it seems I've made a mess of myself. I'm sure it'll all wash off next time we have to swim through Poweraide or raw sewage!" 

"I- Okay. Okay, wait wait wait," Gordon says, waving his hands in front of him. "Back up. One thing at a time. So, you can know whatever they know once they're dead? How does that work?"

"I'm the O.G. Doctor Coomer, of course! I'm connected to all my clones!" 

"If you're connected to them, why do you keep killing them?!"

"Clones are evil Gordon!" Bubby snaps, coming back to butt in to their conversation. "Haven't you ever seen a horror movie before?" 

"Man, this whole... this whole situation is a horror movie, Bubby," he says before turning back to Coomer. "Seriously, though, why kill them if they're you? That's like... an existential nightmare!"

"An existential nightmare is having your ego and power divided across three-hundred plus clones!" Dr. Coomer replies with none of the gravity that statement deserves. Gordon gapes at him.

"You- _What?"_

"Gordon, for 3 PlayCoins, I can unlock my Backstory and Social Tree!" Dr. Coomer says, unaware or uncaring of the solipsist mindfuck he has just dumped on Gordon. "Completing a Social Tree will allow you to use secret skills during the final boss battle!"

Gordon has no idea what to say to that, which is fine, because immediately after saying that, Dr. Coomer adds "Look out! There's explosive barrels ahead!" and proceeds to run directly into them, detonating them. Apparently, being nearly seventy percent robot is enough to make you near indestructable. Gordon takes a moment to put his thoughts together while he catches up. 

So. Dr. Coomer was full flesh-and-blood human, once. And now, thanks to Black Mesa, he's now 69% cyborg and 31%... unwilling hivemind. Or something. Gordon can't afford the PlayCoins to find out (he's still not sure what they are, to be honest, and at this point he's scared to ask), but from what he can piece together, it doesn't seem like a happy story. And Dr. Coomer's enhancements are incredibly handy - everyone's taken a fall at some point, and Dr. Coomer has been there every time to nab them with the ExtendoArmsTM, so it works out.

(It also makes Gordon a lot less anxious about all the weird fluids and radioactive sewage Dr. Coomer has been consuming all day). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, a break from the pattern... The Betrayal.


	4. The Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They betrayed him. They fucking... they just betrayed him. 
> 
> If he wanted to, he could fix the damage (with enough time and enough matter, he could fix the damage), but there's a key problem - human arms don't grow back. And there's a room full of military who all know he's lost his.
> 
> Which means he's stuck like this.
> 
> Fuck.

Bubby being weirdly wary about a room isn't unusual. For all his tendencies to charge ahead, he's also the one most likely to flee from danger. What is a little weird is Benrey's insistance that he go first. Benrey usually does whatever he wants, when he wants to, and doesn't like to have to wait for anyone. Gordon has lost count of the number of times he's run ahead and fucked with a medical station before Gordon could get to it. If he were actually human, there's a pretty good chance he'd be dead right now!

But, for some reason, both Bubby and Benrey are letting him go ahead and take this med station. It would be almost touching, if it weren't for the fact that the lights die as soon as Gordon gets to the center of the room. 

He calls out for the team, and gets some vague responses from Tommy and Dr. Coomer, before he hears heavy footsteps. He quickly adjusts his eyes to see better in the dark, hoping no one flashes a light at him, and his heart drops as he sees several very large military men approaching him.

"You FINALLY gave me a reason to take care of business!" Bubby says as the first hits land. One of the soldiers hits his arm as he's raising his gun, and it's knocked out of his grip. Without a weapon, they descend on him, kicking, punching, and raining blows down with the butts of their rifles. Distantly, he can hear Benrey cheering them on, saying he's gonna be _dead_ soon. Tommy sounds terrified, and Gordon's scared for him, too. What are they going to do with him once Gordon's been dispatched?

Dr. Coomer says something about PlaycoinsTM, but Gordon's a little distracted. One of the bootboys has actually pinned him to the floor, and he feels something restraining his arm. He looks up, and catches a glimpse of the blade as it swings down.

It-

He-

He screams. It's agony, pure and simple, as his arm is split between his wrist and his elbow. He usually has excellent control over his cells - all the better to benefit from his species' skills while staying under the radar - but he can feel his insides literally writhe in pain with him. He can feel pain from the now _stump of an arm_ , but even worse, he can feel echoes of pain from the severed arm. He's never _lost_ a limb before, he doesn't know how that _works_. If he were in more of his right mind, he might have approached it with scientific interest, but all he can think of now is how his unique biology is causing him _more pain_. The ever-present fear of being discovered rears its ugly head, fighting its way up his throat as he tries to figure out why they would do this. Had they figured it out? What if they took the arm and realized it didn't belong to a human? Why would they do this? Had they traded him in for their own freedom, realizing that an unknown monster was worth their own safety? He gags on his fear and his pain, before realizing that it's not just a metaphysical choking, but his own bile. The soldiers continue to rain blows down on him, their mocking grins visible thanks to Gordon's enhanced vision, and he wishes he couldn't see it. 

It's a blessing and a curse when the final boot connects with his skull and sends him into blissful unconciousness. A blessing, because _everything fucking hurts_ , and a curse because his last thoughts are resigned fear that his discovery is now inevitable. 

\--

He wakes up on the wrong side of a garbage compactor. 

He's alone, and things are quiet, aside from the sound of metal and plastic being crushed on the other side of the hydraulic press. 

His arm is missing.

So is his team. 

He closes his eyes, fighting back the pain that's distracting him. It'll be fine, he thinks deleriously. His arm's gone, but at least he can't _feel it_ anymore. He can just... grow it back. He feels sure of that. He just needs to get out of here, get some food, some rest...

But there are witnesses, he realizes, gut sinking. The tactical squad that took his arm... the Science Team... they all _know_ his arm is gone. If he has another arm all of a sudden, they'll _know_. 

The truth of it settles dreadfully over him. That's it. He's down an arm now, and the only thing he can do is accept that, because otherwise, he'll be exposed. He can't afford that. He can't fight his way out of this hell only to be thrown into a tube or cloned and modified and poked and prodded and _studied_...

He gets to his feet slowly, wincing as he braces his arm. The pain makes it so hard to focus, but he manages to keep from bleeding too much. If he can just make it to a med station, he can get painkillers strong enough to allow him to do some minimal healing. Not a lot, but enough to ensure he'll survive. 

Something dark stirs in him, in the acrid underbelly of his instincts, below everything he's taught himself about being human. It's a feeling his parents encouraged him to listen to, the one key instruction he'd been given before they'd set him loose into the world to fend for himself. It led him to learning about humans, to mimicking them better and better. It led him to knowledge and discovery and science. It had reservations about being here, so he feels confident that it's never led him wrong before. 

He stares down at the ground, pointedly not focusing on the stub of his forearm in his peripheral. He can't grow it back, because they'll know.

They'll know if they're alive.

If there aren't any witnesses alive... no one will know. 

He thinks about who saw. The military men... they'll be easy enough, he just has to find them and not get ambushed this time. Based on Coomer's dubiously accurate estimations of the United States Military, and the radio signals they've intercepted, he doubts they've been able to report much higher up. He'll just have to kill every military personnel he sees from now on. Easy. 

The Science Team, on the other hand... He waffles over it for a moment, hesitant. Up to an hour ago, he would have said they were his best friends. He would have said that you can't go through an experience like this without bonding with the people around you (yes, he would never admit it out loud, but even Benrey, a little). He would have (and had) done whatever it took to get them all out of here. 

But, Bubby and Benrey traded him in to the US Military. Dr. Coomer refused to help. And Tommy...

Gordon swallows thickly. Who knew where Tommy was at this point. Maybe he'd been captured or killed. He didn't have the super-human abilities of the others. 

If Gordon was lucky... Tommy was already dead.

He just needs to kill the other members of the Science Team.

With that shaky resolve, he pulls himself out of the garbage compactor and starts hobbling his way through Black Mesa once again. His whole body aches, evidence of the beating he took, and his head in particular throbs in time with the sterile florescent lighting that flickers overhead. If he had more mass, he could work to fix these things, but all he's fucking had to drink or eat in the last however long it's been has been _fucking Soda._ And that's only been if he could get to it before the Science Team launched themselves at it like a swarm of demented hummingbirds. There hasn't been enough to give him the ample energy he needs to heal himself up, so he'll just have to rely on the good ol' fashioned human methods. At least he's well practiced in them. 

He has to drag himself across a small courtyard, walled in by natural cliffs, and barely makes it past an eager headcrab. His helplessness, stripped of weapons, delirious with pain, and angry and _hurt_ by betrayal, cements his dedication. That dark impulse in his gut curls around the thought. 

No witnesses. 

Not the military. And not the Science Team. 

The entity known as Gordon Freeman is getting out of here alive and in no more pieces than he currently is now, and he will not let _anyone_ get in the way.

He makes his way into the next building, riding down the silo elevator and entering one of the delivery shafts. Up ahead, he hears movement. 

There's only the sound of one person, and he knows that Black Mesa's security systems are fucked - no need to worry about cameras.

As he creeps along, he alters his teeth, sharper, longer, jagged. It wouldn't be a clean kill, but it would be a sure one, and he can always clean up at the next med station. There are plenty of aliens running around - one military man with a shredded throat will hardly raise suspicions.

And if it's one of the Science Team, then... hopefully, the element of surprise will allow him to take down Coomer or Bubby before they retaliate. Benrey, he'll have to improvise more.

Without really thinking about it, his cells shift, pushing his body's efforts into muscle and speed. It thins him out a little, but it's hardly noticeable under the HEV suit, and by the time whoever is ahead sees him, it'll be too late.

He creeps up to the mouth of the shaft, he peers over the side cautiously.

There, standing with his back to him, looking around the room with clear worry... is Tommy.

That dark instinct is snuffed to nothing instantly. His teeth grow blunt, limbs almost go slack under the force of reorganizing everything again as he looks down at Tommy, aghast. 

What had he been _thinking_? What was- He was going to-

"T-Tommy!" he calls, before he can think on it more, and before he can chicken out and run. "Up here! It's me!" 

Tommy turns, looking across the wall for a moment before finding him. His relief is palpable, and it makes Gordon's stomach turn all the worse for what he had been planning. "Hello, Mr. Freeman," he says, sounding worried and confused, but still looking happy to see him, at least.

They talk for a minute, Tommy telling him what little he knew about Benrey and Bubby's betrayal. Apparently, the Science Team is all split up. That would be good news, if Gordon had still wanted to do his murder-spree, but seeing Tommy there makes all those thoughts shrivel to nothing in his chest. 

He's lost his hand. He'll deal with it. 

Tommy's still alive, and still trusts him. And together, they're going to get the fuck out of here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow... a plot is happening???? What????
> 
> Also, I'm considering making an ask blog for these guys for post-Black Mesa. orrrr just writing a sequel. Or something. what do you guys think? More Non-Human Gordon for you beans y/n?


	5. Boss Battle: Coomer Clone Redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Without his hand, and with no med stations in sight, Gordon is relying on Tommy 100% to get them through. Tommy wants to find the rest of the Science Team, and while Gordon's hesitant, he needs Tommy if he's going to get out of here without resorting to drastic means, so he'll go along with it and see what the rest of the Science Team has to say for themselves.
> 
> And then he pulls himself out of a drain pipe, and finds himself face to face with Dr. Coomer and Dr. Coomer and Dr. Coomer and Dr. Coomer and-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up - Gordon's thoughts get a little dark here due to delirium and blood loss, and he considers letting himself die. It is very short, but there, so be aware.

It's great to be reunited with Tommy, who is doing a fantastic job of keeping everything that could kill Gordon _away_ from Gordon. He has never been so relieved to have Tommy's sharp-shooting skills on his side, even as he continues to practice just... _terrible_ gun safety skills. 

You think someone who had read the entirety of the OSHA guidelines would have a cursory intuition for where not to point guns. 

No, that wasn't fair, Gordon thinks to himself as he stumbles after Tommy. There was no way Tommy knew something like this was coming, and it's not like he's ever used a gun before. Right now, Tommy is single-handedly getting Gordon out of here, because Gordon is worse than useless right now. 

If they could just find a single med station, maybe he could patch himself up a little. He's stopped most of the bleeding, but jumping around the facility isn't helping. Every time he has to jump or climb, it jolts his arm and the whole thing starts leaking again. Not to mention, he lost a lot of blood even before he woke up, and it's starting to show.

All that doesn't even _account_ for all the raw sewage he's fallen into, either. 

The only thing that's kept him on his feet this long has been slowly transferring body mass to his veins, repurposing cells into blood so he can push on a little longer. That's not going to last forever, though - he's finished with any excess body fat, and almost completely liquidated his appendix. He's fairly certain he can live without that (he's not a _medical_ doctor!), but he doesn't want to get started on one of his kidneys. Not to mention, he's wasting energy making those changes to his body, which in turn slows him down. If he only had some food, he could patch himself up better - process the matter into new cells, scar over the wound on his hand, and pull himself together. But wherever they are, there's no food. There's not even any _soda_ machines. 

Maybe he should just stop making blood and call it a day. Tommy's clearly doing fine on his own, and Gordon's only slowing him down. If he just stopped making new blood, stopped trying to drag himself on, Tommy wouldn't have to be watching over him like this. He could just... stop. Rest. Give up on worrying about everything. 

"Mr. Freeman?"

Gordon startles, wincing as it jostles his arm. Tommy winces in sympathy, looking down at him. Gordon blinks. Hadn't he been scouting ahead? "Yeah, Tommy?"

Tommy's hands fidget, as if he wants to wring them, but can't with the gun in the way. At least this time, he has it aimed down away from Gordon. "I've been uh- I called your name, and you weren't saying anything!" he said, brow furrowing. "Are you- are you okay?" 

He cannot help but laugh at that, and the fact that Tommy looks even more concerned now just makes him laugh harder. "No, no bud, I uh... don't think so. Think Gordon might be... might be down for the count soon."

Tommy's expressing flashes from shocked to scared. Then, to Gordon's surprise, it hardens. Flint-brittle but just as sharp, his mouth narrows into a thin, inarguable line. "Mr. Freeman, I... You're not going to give up _now_ ," he says, with such absolute certainty that Gordon startles again, standing at attention. It's not the confidence of someone trying to impart comfort into someone else - Tommy states this like a _fact_. "W-we said we were going to le- to get out of here together, and we're _going to_." 

Gordon blinks up at that unyielding, severe expression, and says the only thing that could be the right answer. "...okay." 

Instantly, that terrifying expression dissolves, leaving relief behind. "Good." 

Surprisingly, Tommy's weird moment of encouragement helps Gordon keep going. He can't stop now, Tommy may not be counting on him, but he wants them to get out of here together. So, they're gonna do that. 

This optimism lasts until Gordon swims up from another underwater passage, and comes face to face to face to face with more Dr. Coomers than he has ever seen. 

Tommy pulls himself out quickly, pulling his firearm, and there's the briefest moment where Gordon manages to gasp out "What the _fuck_?" 

And then, a single Dr. Coomer turns, fixes Gordon with a smile and a crazed stare, and greets him with a fond "Hello, Gordon!"

It's pandemonium in a second - Dr. Coomer's clones launch themselves at Tommy, and Gordon, who's still trying to get _out_ of the water, finds half a dozen of them pushing him back as he struggles to keep his head above water. They don't seem nearly as enhanced as Dr. Coomer, thankfully, so no ExtendoArmsTM hold him under. Through a forest of clone legs, he can see Tommy, absolutely surrounded by Coomer-clones, but they're rushing him as quickly as he can take them out as Dr. Coomer announces that he has unleashed all _three-hundred clones_ on the two of them!

Finally, Gordon finds an opening, and pulls himself on land, crawling madly between two clones. By the time he gets to his feet, however, they've recovered - he's cornered, and they're approaching him with wide smiles, armed with loaded syringes.

Through the crowd, Dr. Coomer smiles at him, looking more lucid than his cloned counterparts, but all the more terrifying for it. "There's an entrance in your suit, Dr. Freeman. _**AND I WANT IN.**_ " 

Gordon laughs hysterically. "What?!" he shouts over the absolutely chaotic choir of "Hello Gordon!"s that's playing around them. He has a dozen clones surrounding him now, and he cries out to Tommy for help as they try to pin him down. The sensation is too much like That Room, and he manages to push them back, swinging wildly. An explosion goes off nearby, taking out more than half of them. Gordon locks eyes with Tommy long enough for the other scientist to see that he's alive, and then Tommy turns his rocket-launcher back to clearing the room at large.

Unfortunately, the leading Dr. Coomer was standing out of blast range. Or, maybe, he's simply too powerful, with all his cybernetic and clone-based regeneration, to be taken down by one rocket. "I've been outside Black Mesa, Dr. Freeman," he says ominously, approaching where his clones have Gordon caged in. "There's NOTHING there! But you-!"

He raises his fists, and Gordon's heart stops. He's seen so many lives get snuffed out today at Coomer's literal hands. He just never thought he'd be one of them. "I know there's a world in your dreams, Dr. Freeman.

" _ **And I Need To Go There!"**_

It's pure, panicked luck that Gordon manages to duck the first swing, and he can hear the sound of Dr. Coomer's metallic fists grating against the concrete walls. From there he makes a mad dash, spurred on by the sounds of an ExtendoArmTM retracting. The top of the stairs look clear of living clones, so he rushes past Tommy, who's clearing out the group surrounding him, and breaks for the platform, turning the corner on a hairpin. There's a short hall, and then he finds himself in yet another room, the only exit being a tunnel of water. 

His heart sinks. He's watched Dr. Coomer _wrestle_ a _shark_. He's got _no_ advantage here.

"End of the line, Dr. Freeman!" 

He leaps into the water, and before the current whisks him away, he sees Tommy come in and start shooting. 

It's a tense few minutes underwater before he sees a passageway he recognizes. It leads back to the room they found the clones in, but right now, his options are drown or face down whatever Coomer clones Tommy hasn't killed. 

Drowning sounds good, but he told Tommy he wouldn't give up. 

When he surfaces, Tommy's the only one there, searching the piles of Coomer corpses with a worried expression.

"Tommy?"

He whirls on the spot, face lighting up. "Mr. Freeman!" he calls, running over to help him out of the water. "I killed them all."

"All of them?" Gordon asks, coughing up some water. Ugh, Tommy might have said that it was clean, but it was certainly _less_ so having had so much... clone blood leaking into it. "All of them? Tommy, the one- the one who was talking about a world in my dreams, did- did you kill that one?"

Tommy hesitates, looking around. "Um... they all look the same, Mr. Freeman," he says. "They're- I mean, that's why they're clones. That's the definition." 

Gordon barks a laugh at that, on the verge of tears. It takes him a long moment to recover, unfortunately, made longer when Tommy hesitantly makes an offer of soda, which sets Gordon off again. 

When he finally has himself under control again, he pulls himself to his feet, swaying woozily. They start to head on, past the health station (depleted, probably purposefully - if Dr. Coomer meant to kill him, he wouldn't have risked Gordon healing himself), and past another Coomer clone corpse.

(There are too many corpses here. He hadn't noticed it before, when they'd all been together, but now he's hurt, and the corpses are already dead, and surprisingly appetizing, and he's so, _so_ hungry...)

He's turning to ask Tommy if he has any idea where they are and what's next, just to distract himself, when the clone jumps to its feet with a cry of "SURPRISE ATTACK!" 

Gordon's fleeing before he even registers that the Coomer clone is going the wrong way, and Tommy has to drag him back out of the water again after dispatching it.

"You- did you kill it?" Gordon asks. Tommy nods, leading him back to show him the corpse. Which is when the _weirdest fucking thing happens._

" _ **GORDON**_ ," Dr. Coomer's voice rings in his head. His vision goes fuzzy, and he drops to his knees, clutching at his head. When - had Dr. Coomer _always had_ telepathic powers? " _ **Every Time You Go To Sleep, I Can Feel My Body TORN apart, ATOM. By ATOM. It's AGONIZING, Gordon!**_ " 

Gordon sobs with pain, gritting his teeth and glaring at the body. He tries to punch it, forgetting about his arm in the confusion of the moment, and only succeeds in smacking it ineffectively with the stump of his arm. "SHUT UP!"

" ** _I've SEEN outside Black Mesa, Gordon. There's NOTHING... But I know YOU. There's a world outside here, Gordon. AND I NEED YOU TO TAKE ME THERE..._** "

The last of Dr. Coomer's psychic message rattles and rasps in Gordon's brain, slowly fading to nothing. Blinking spots away from his vision, he looks over at Tommy, who looks genuinely disturbed. When he looks back, the clone is gone. 

"Tommy?" he asks, voice cracking. "Do you have _any_ words of wisdom? From your books?" He needs _something_ to latch onto, right now, to distract him from the enticing smell of blood and viscera - his own, Tommy's, Coomer's - and the absolute _madness_ his fucking life has become. If it's possible to get PTSD from a greeting, he's pretty sure he has that now! If he ever hears "hello Gordon" again before he dies, it'll be too soon.

"Ah, Hello Gordon! Nice work taking out my clones!" 

It is gratifying that Tommy _immediately_ unloads a shotgun blast straight into Dr. Coomer's face. It doesn't _kill_ him, since apparently the OG Dr. Coomer is unkillable, but it's nice to know that he wasn't the _only_ one freaked out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, we collect Bubby!
> 
> Also I'm (very lowkey) sad that I couldn't fit one of my favorite Coomer lines in this chapter - "They're... not Soda..."  
> That and his final boss battle line in response to Gordon not having a mini map - "W...why not?" - are my two like, absolute favorite lines for some reason. 
> 
> Love me some Dr. Coomer. He's my Big Fave.
> 
> Also, sorry for the bit of delay on this one! I've been working on a co-op fic with HLVRAI crossed with FO:NV Old World Blues. It's on Quotev and I may port it over later, but here's the link if anyone is interested! https://www.quotev.com/story/13258015/Fallout-Black-Mesa-Old-Xen-Blues


	6. Gordon - Human Adjacent?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long day for Gordon, if you consider "The time since I woke up without an arm on the wrong side of the garbage compactor to Now" a day. It's made worse by his injury, and although Tommy and Dr. Coomer are helping him out, Gordon can't help but feel he knows what he needs...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, we're starting to move a bit into Gordon's Body Horror corner in this chapter. If you read the other part of this series, it's not worse than that - just some bodily descriptions and nomming on things that ought not be nommed.
> 
> Also, posting this suuuuper late without really looking over it, so I may do an editing pass in the next day or two. lemmie know if you see any glaring errors! Thanks!

It’s kind of nice to have a little sit-down with the team, as reduced as it was. It’s less nice when Dr. Coomer suggests that they get a cybernetic replacement for Gordon’s arm, because as much as Gordon would _love_ to have his hand back, he’s starting to become resigned to the fact that, if he wants to keep the Science Team alive (and, despite Bubby and Benrey’s betrayal, and Dr. Coomer’s… clone-aided existential breakdown, he _does_ ), he has to come to the terms with the fact that he’s just not going to have an arm from now on. The possibility of having a cybernetic one is worrysome, because that implies having some sort of surgery, and Gordon is _not_ about to put himself under the knife. Not in Black Mesa. Not the way his internal organs look right now. If he gets any sort of cybernetics _now_ , it’ll be an easy trip down to the Theoretical Biology department.

Still, Dr. Coomer seems eager to help, and Tommy agrees with the concept of getting Gordon an arm again, and without explaining himself, Gordon really doesn’t have an argument against their logic. So, they plan their way to the Cybernetics Department.

Having Dr. Coomer back on the team is both a relief and one of the most unnerving things Gordon has gone through in this whole experience. Unnerving being the key word here, since he’s definitely undergone things that are more traumatizing, more painful, and more horrific. But, in terms of unsettling, traveling with Dr. Coomer takes the cake. Whatever sort of extra awareness he’d developed from being a hivemind and a cyborg seems to have been amplified in his time alone, and between the usual verbal ticks that now send Gordon into a flashback of the Clone War (as he’s dubbing it in his head) and the quiet, somber one-line responses, Gordon is definitely on-edge.

Fortunately, that’s mitigated somewhat both by Dr. Coomer’s usual helpful attitude, _and_ his blunt honesty about the quality of the water and sad, sad state of Gordon’s health, which helps Gordon feel a lot more grounded. Combine that with Tommy’s ray-of-sunshine personality, and the fact that the two of them together are killing machines who haven’t let a single alien get within ten feet of Gordon, and you have an extremely grateful Gordon Freeman.

Dr. Coomer also provides an excellent distraction, which Gordon desperately needs. Ever since they’d defeated the Coomer clones, he’s had this… this weird ache in his gut, which is not unusual, considering the amount of times he’s been shot at today, or the number of athletic feats he’s had to perform, or the fact that he’d very recently re-purposed several of his internal organs to keep himself alive. What worries him, though, is the source of those aches.

He’d first noticed in just before the final clone’s surprise attack, but he hadn’t had the time to focus on it, since he was too busy with the clone’s psychic assault and the real Coomer’s reappearance. The ache had waned as they made their way onwards, swimming through to the next part of the facility and continuing towards the Lambda Lab.

As he’s standing at the top of a conveyor belt laden with human skulls, the air thick with a pervasive cloud of bone dust, he feels it return, and he does _not_ like the implications there.

“Wh-why does Black Mesa have a _skull grinding_ facility?” he wheezes, jumping from one conveyor belt to another.

“This is a crucial part of our cybernetics research!” Dr. Coomer replies, tapping at one of the skulls with his foot. By this point, Gordon knows better than to expect any kind of further explanation.

By the time they’re nearly out of the skull grinding facility, that ache is slowing him down almost as much as the pain from his missing arm. He’s slowing Tommy and Coomer down, he _knows_ he is, but he doesn’t have it in him to worry about it. Besides, he knows Tommy won’t leave him, and while he’s not certain about Dr. Coomer’s motives (the words “climbing inside your arm and wearing you like a puppet” are still pretty fresh and reasonably horrifying in his mind), he hopes that, after all they’ve been through, Dr. Coomer wouldn’t just leave him behind.

They must have noticed his slowing pace as well, because as they reach the end of the skull grinding facility, Tommy suddenly pulls off into a side room, Coomer right behind him. Gordon hears a few gunshots inside, and then Dr. Coomer is leading him in.

“Look Gordon! We can rest here for a little while!” he declares, gesturing to the small office they’ve found. Compared to some of the other places they’ve found, it… actually looks quite cozy. Even with Tommy carefully pushing all of the headcrab corpses off to one side.

“Yeah, if you guys need to rest, I-”

“Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says, cutting him off as he drops the last headcrab onto the pile. “We’re not - rushing ahead isn’t going to do us much good if you drop before we get there!”

Gordon has no argument for that. If he weren’t so badly off, he might have been embarassed or annoyed at them slowing down for him, but with that ache, he’s glad to take a break. Tommy spends a moment checking out the area down the hall, making sure that the area is clear, then checks that the door closes properly, and then the three of them lie down to nap.

Except, Gordon realizes as he stares at the ceiling, now that they’re not moving, he can’t _help_ but to focus on that ache in his gut.

A human, he knows, would try to sleep it off. There was nothing to eat here, and he needed the rest _badly_. But deeper, underneath the logic, his instinct was pushing at him.

The last time he didn’t listen to his instincts, he started working at Black Mesa, and look how well _that_ had worked out for him.

So Gordon waits, listening to the sounds of his companions breathing. He waits until it’s even and steady, until he’s absolutely sure they’re asleep.

Then, he quietly gets up, and slips out of the room.

It’s easy to trace his way back to the skull grinding facility. He just follows the trail of alien corpses and his own blood, and the distant sounds of machinery grows closer. He lets himself work on autopilot, feeling safe in the knowledge that Dr. Coomer and Tommy have gotten rid of any alien threat here, and with absolute trust in his own instincts. His parents had told him to trust them, and they’d never led him wrong before.

He breathes through his mouth as he comes into the main room of the facility, inhaling the calcium dust in the air. His body leeches it from his lungs, funneling it to the rest of his body, but it’s not much.

It’s not enough.

He tucks himself into a space next to the belt, a small spot clearly not meant for people to sit, but it leaves the conveyor belt within easy reach, and that’s what’s most important.

He reaches out, and plucks one of the skulls from the belt. The dust he’d breathed in earlier reroutes, dead cells reviving as he absorbs the wonderful information within them, and he instinctively bares his teeth as they fill out, becoming wider and flatter. The muscles in his jaw grow denser, tougher, more powerful. He trusts his body, because it knows what he needs, and he is too tired and too hungry to think too hard about what he’s doing.

He lifts the skull to his mouth, lips curling back, and unhinges his jaw for the first bite. The skull cracks under the force, then crumbles entirely, and he chews it carefully. Wherever they got it from, it’s relatively fresh, because the brain is still soft, malleable, unpreserved. It coats the shards of bone, rendering it to a paste rather than a dust, though his mouth is dry when he swallows. The thin layers of bone have sweet, delicious yellow marrow between them, and his body absorbs that as quickly as he can eat, adapting it and making it his own, before utilizing it. It processes itself first into red marrow and red blood cells, clearing some of the wooziness from Gordon’s mind, then forms clots over his wound, accelerated by his unique biology. They thicken and harden into a thick, ugly scab, and then, with his newly recovered clarity, he stops it from healing any further.

He’s made his decision. He’s getting out of here with Tommy and Dr. Coomer (and maybe even Bubby and Benrey, if they can explain what the _fuck_ they thought they were doing), and that means no more hand. Not if he doesn’t want to get caught.

There are other things in his body that need fixing, however, and he reaches for another skull.

This one, he sends the fatty tissues from the brain to his organs, where the cells are transformed and adapted to match his own. His appendix returns, and with the third skull, so does some of his body fat. He eats a fourth one before he can stop himself, and is picking up the fifth when he makes the mistake of actually _looking_ at it.

Two empty sockets look back at him, jawbone still tenuously connected by ligaments, and he jumps in surprise at how weirdly alive it looks. It drops from his hand, tumbling between his hiding spot and the conveyor belt, and tumbles soundlessly into the darkness below.

“What… am I _doing_?” he asks himself after watching it disappear from view. The taste of bone and brain and marrow are still fresh in his mouth, still _savored_ behind his teeth, which are still too broad, too strong… he uses some of his newfound energy to shift them back, until they’re human again. Until they’re _normal_ again, he thinks to himself, pulling himself to standing. So long as they’re attached to him, they’ll never be _human._

He’s never had a fugue state like this one before, and it worries him. He trusts his instincts, but he’s also _never eaten skulls before_ , much less felt _compelled_ to do so. He doesn’t know exactly what he is, but he’s always been human-adjacent - he eats the same things, looks relatively the same, requires food and sleep to function… the only real differences are his ability to adapt his cells as freely as he does and the deep-seated instincts to keep his existence a secret. _Body-eating_ , however, is _brand fucking new_ , and he’s not a fan.

He avoids looking at any more skulls as he makes the trip back, more mindful now that the ache in his gut has been quelled. His arm feels better too - though it throbs with each jump he makes, the scabbing holds firm, a sign of progress for it healing the _human_ way.

He doesn’t want the quick scabbing to raise suspicion with Tommy or Dr. Coomer, though. So, on his way back he stops and tears a rag off of a dead scientist’s coat, wrapping it around the stump to hide the scab. It’s hard with one arm, but he manages to secure the bandages by tucking them into the cut-off edges of the HEV suit. When that’s done, he sneaks back into the office his teammates are sleeping in, still lost in thought over his unusual midnight snack.

He must be louder coming in than out, though, because Tommy shoots upright, gun coming up and leveling at Gordon instantly.

Gordon has a split second where he thinks Tommy will actually pull the trigger, staring into Tommy’s bright, almost glowing, yellow ones, before they soften with sleep and recognition.

“Mr. Freeman?” Tommy asks, lowering the gun and yawning. When he blinks again, that intensity is gone. “What are you doing?”

“Just had to, uh… go to the bathroom?” he tries weakly, unable to make it _not_ sound like an excuse. Tommy blinks tiredly at him, then frowns.

“You should - please wake one of us next time,” he says. “With everything going on, it’s - it’s not safe for anyone to go by themself.”

Gordon’s gut twists for a different reason: guilt. Of course Tommy would be worried about him, Gordon had been loitering on death’s lawn all day, and if he had been human, he _definitely_ would have kicked it already. Tommy’s only human in all of this. Gordon might not be able to protect himself or anyone else right now - the least he can do is give Tommy one less thing to worry about.

“Sure thing, buddy,” he says, making his way back to his corner of the room. He feels Tommy’s eyes on him the whole way, making the back of his neck prickle. “Sorry for worrying you.”

Tommy gives a hum, either in assent or forgiveness, and lies back down. Gordon follows suit, and has the fleeting worry that he’ll have a hard time sleeping, trying to process all of what just happened, but exhaustion finds him asleep before he can finish the thought.


End file.
